This expressionlessness was at least as exciting as her skin, however, and, insofar as it was intangible, even more exciting, for the lack of the usual signs of emotions differed from what could be observed in a normal pair of eyes which, when trying not to betray emotion, become their own mask, revealing to us that they do indeed have something to hide, suggesting the very thing they conceal; in her eyes nothing gained expression or, rather, it was nothing itself that her eyes were continually and relentlessly giving expression to, the way normal eyes express emotion, desire, or anger; her eyes were like objects one never gets used to; they appeared to be a pair of lenses used for seeing, an impassive outer covering, so when one looked into them and watched their mechanical flutter, one naturally assumed there must be another pair of eyes, more lively and feeling, behind these seeing lenses, just as we would want to see the eyes, the human glance, behind sparkling eyeglasses, convinced that without our seeing them a person's words cannot be properly understood.
When she'd stop at the door of an afternoon, she would say nothing, as though she knew that her shrill voice would only give her away, and rousing our grandmother would have meant depriving herself of the joys and agonies of possible games, the games of our secret complicity; she must have known this, though her memory did not seem to function or, if it did, worked most peculiarly, since there was no rational way to account for what she remembered or what she forgot; she could eat only with her hands, and though adults tried at every meal to train her to use utensils, she didn't catch on, forks and spoons simply fell from her hand, she didn't understand why she had to keep holding them; yet our names, for example, she did remember, she called everyone by their right name, and she was also toilet-trained, and if accidentally she wet or made in her pants, she would sit in a corner for hours, whimpering inconsolably, imposing on herself the punishment Grandmother had devised for her long ago, and there seemed to be an act of goodwill in this self-punishment, a great gesture of goodwill toward us all; although I could not make her learn numbers — we'd study them and she'd promptly forget them — and she had problems recognizing and distinguishing colors, she was always very cooperative, always willing to start afresh, and eager to please us; her strained exertions were quite touching to see, as when she looked for an oft-used everyday word and knit her brow in intense concentration, and would at first fail, because her language, after all, was not words, but then, when the sought-after word or expression did come to her lips in the form of a triumphant scream and she herself could hear it and then be able to identify it, her face lit up with her sweetest smile, her happiest laugh, a smile and laugh of utter bliss the likes of which we would probably never experience.
For while there was nothing in her eyes one could take for expressions of feeling or emotion, her smile and laugh may have been the language she used to communicate with us, the only language she spoke; it was hers, a language for the initiated, to be sure, but perhaps more beautiful and superior to our own because its single though endlessly modifiable word conveyed pure joy of being.
One day I noticed a pin on my desk, an ordinary pin; I had no idea how it got there, but there it was, at the bottom of the deep corridor formed by my scattered books and notebooks, gleaming just bright enough to be noticed on the brown wood; I couldn't really say why then I kept my eye on it for days or why I was so careful not to move it while turning pages in my books or while reading, writing, or just aimlessly shuffling my things, packing and unpacking my schoolbag; I may have also thought that it would disappear as unexpectedly as it had appeared, but no, it would be there again the next day; that afternoon the lamp with the red shade was turned on, though it wasn't quite dark yet, she was standing in the shadows and, looking out from the light cast by the lamp, I more or less sensed her presence in the pleasant warmth of the late afternoon, and she, blinded by the light and still groggy from sleep, could not have seen me very clearly; a few more soft tapping sounds were heard from the kitchen and then the silence was complete; I knew the silence would last for another half hour, so the game we had both been waiting for could begin, and we could start it with anything at all; the pin was still on my desk — all I had to do was to make the first move and the rest would follow by itself — so with my fingernails I picked up the pin by its head; I simply wanted to show it to her, to have her see it; she began to smile, most likely getting ready to laugh her most intimate laugh, reluctantly at first, because she was afraid of me and had to overcome this fear each time anew, and I was also afraid of her; but we didn't have much time and I knew I couldn't get out of it anymore, she wouldn't let me; if she didn't make the first move, I would, and if I didn't, then she would; in this we were at each other's mercy.
Later, discovering a true, deep, and therefore not easily explained attraction, I amassed a respectable collection of these pins, carefully storing them away, and not just those that turned up accidentally; after a while I began to look for them, track them down, hunt for them; strangely enough, once it became an obsession, I kept finding them everywhere, which was strange, since I'd never remembered them turning up before so conspicuously and persistently; now I'd come across them in the most unlikely places: in pillows, in cracks, in coat linings, on the street, in the upholstered armrest of an easy chair — with a flash and a prick, they would announce their presence; I began to classify them, having discovered the many different kinds, and as a test I would prick my finger and let it bleed a little; there were all sorts of pins: long and short, with round heads or flat, with heads of colored pearl; rusty pins, stainless-steel pins, straight pins and spear-shaped pins — and they all pricked differently; but that afternoon I had only that plain, long, round-headed one that had landed so mysteriously on my desk that I even had asked my father about it when he happened to stop in my room one evening, and he looked amazed, even baffled, as he bent over, not comprehending what I was showing him; pushing back his straight blond hair, which kept falling in his eyes, his gesture unconscious yet annoyed, he told me gruffly not to bother him with my silly games; this pin, then, the original piece of what later became my collection, I was just showing to her, with no special intention, as if I had to show it to everyone; I simply held it up to the light, and then my little sister took the crucial first step and approached the pin, and that made me move, though still with no specific purpose; I slid off my chair and slipped under the desk.